


the hand is also a cup (hold me, hold me)

by strawberrv



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Compliant, Child Abuse, Concussions, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, Missing Scene, Pre-Canon, lapslock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28517736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberrv/pseuds/strawberrv
Summary: that time gansey found out.set sometime during the eighteen months pre-canon.
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Adam Parrish
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45





	the hand is also a cup (hold me, hold me)

**Author's Note:**

> hiiiiiiiii so i'm only on bllb but i got infected with loving adam parrish syndrome and had to do something about it :/ and pls don't think im a pynch anti or anything fhjsjkjdkj i just think........ adam/gansey are neat :-) (sidenote what is their ship name.. um.. pansey ???? garrish. what is it. help.)'
> 
> title from ummmm i forgot which episode but a recent wonderful! podcast episode where rachel mcelroy said she was working on a poem and said "the hand is also a cup" and ruined my life forever ugh

when gansey found out, adam felt like a train that’d been coming at him for months finally hit him. the smallest bit of relief, but mostly pain. and fear.

he’d had a lucky streak (because it was luck, truly, and nothing else that kept robert parrish’s anger at bay on any given day) these last few months, and the one time he did come to school with a bruise, dark blue, under his jaw, it went like this:

gansey leaned over to him in latin class and asked, lowly, “what happened there?”

adam, not privy to his own appearance and by now so used to the ache that it had faded into the background, only registered the object of gansey’s question when the other’s eyes darted down to it.

“oh,” he said, a little too loud, earning a glance from tad carruthers. lowering his voice in kind, he said, “knocked myself on a nissan at the shop.”

the line between gansey’s eyebrows smoothed itself, and the rock in adam’s chest moved to somewhere less noticeable. the best lie was the truth, after all, and he _had_ run into a nissan at the shop in a daze of exhaustion a few days ago. but that bruise was on his shoulder.

it happened by accident, because adam wouldn’t have let it happen any other way. an annoying bit of fate; the camaro passing by adam’s neighborhood on its way back from gansey’s favorite insomnia-diner. gansey, in what adam can only assume was a combination of naïveté, friendliness, and boredom, decided to stop by his good friend adam parrish’s house, the route familiar from dropping him off after school. it didn’t occur to him, why adam had never invited him inside, why adam had pressed a piece of notebook paper with his home phone number scrawled on it into his palm with a firm, “only for emergencies. i’m serious, gansey.” it didn’t occur to him that the shouting he heard wasn’t from a television.

adam, who was laying on the floor with what he hoped was just a mild concussion, scrambled to his feet at the polite little knock at the door of their double-wide. he launched himself toward the front, but his father intercepted him. of course. the door hit him as his father opened it, and he couldn’t help a low groan. for a moment, nothing, and then gansey’s voice, full of refined charm.

“hello, sir, i don’t suppose adam’s home, is he?”

robert parrish gave a great, mean laugh, _ha!_ then, “what do you want with him? you some kinda representative for that damn school?” a pause, during which adam leaned his head against the wall where he was hidden behind the open door, and prayed. for what, he didn’t know.

“...no, sir, i’m just a friend of adam’s. i actually wanted his help with some of our latin exercises.”

adam watched his father rumble, then step aside, swaying drunkenly. “that stupid kid don’t know no latin, but he’s all yours.”

as soon as his father was back in the living room, adam gripped the door and peered around to see gansey, bewildered and concerned. adam felt nausea churn in his gut. he carefully shut the door behind him as he slipped outside, and then promptly grabbed gansey’s wrist and marched them both back out to the camaro. thank goodness it was too dark for his father to see the great orange beast. things might not have gone so smoothly. 

“adam?” gansey said, sounding, for once, as young as he actually is. 

adam gripped the top edge of the camaro for dear life, waiting for his head to stop pounding. when it didn’t, he just opened the passenger door and got in. time was still viscous and slippery in adam’s hands; the driver’s seat was empty, and then gansey was next to him, with nothing in between. concussions really were his least favorite consequence of his father’s open palm, and he thought he might really have to go to the hospital this time.

but first: gansey. gansey, looking at him with worry, with one sharp barb of anger, gansey knowing, gansey clueless. he lifted one of the hands adam had watched caress the pages of his leather-bound journal and imagined on his own skin more often than not. then he put it down, unsure. adam took a shaking breath.

gansey turned to the windshield and put those hands (strong, soft, with no callous, hands for touching clean, expensive things, not dirty things, not difficult things, not adam-things) on the steering wheel, where his knuckles went white. “he hits you.” he said, with a period and not a comma. not a question, certainly, just that. _he hits you._

adam swallowed thick, swallowed blood, a little bit, trickling into his throat from his nose.

“yeah,” he said, all of his recent efforts at sounding like the other aglionby boys falling apart in his mouth. the word was long and lilting, made of his parents’ vowels and the change in his pocket and nothing else. it was the truth, and he hated it.

“okay,” gansey said, like he was going to fix it. except, he didn’t say anything else after that.

“yeah,” adam said again. 

“you didn’t tell me.”

“yeah.”

“stop saying that.”

“okay.”

the overhead light flickered in the camaro; dust motes disappearing and then reappearing. adam thought about what voltage it probably was. he thought about whether the panel covering the bulb required a phillips-head or a slot-drive screwdriver. he rubbed his fingers over his thumb, still greasy from the garage. 

“do you —” gansey started abruptly, “do you want me to. do you need me to?” and he left it like that, preposition hanging, up to adam to decide what he wanted or needed. 

_do you need me to call the police, do you need me to lend you some money, do you need me to, to, to._

adam needed a tylenol and something in his stomach for the first time today.

adam wanted, period. he looked at gansey, his nice shirt, his glasses, his hair, tawny sheen curled around his ears, (his hands,) and wanted.

“no thank you,” adam said slowly, like he was rejecting sugar in his coffee. he watched gansey’s adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. gansey’s adam’s apple. somewhere in gansey’s throat, was something that adam owned.

“are you okay?” gansey asked, still looking out into the dark, mouth turned down.

“i think i have a concussion,” adam said, because he didn’t think he could ride his bike to the hospital like this. gansey whirled sideways, brows a furious line of concern.

“what?” he said, and then, “look at me,” and his hands came off the steering wheel and landed on adam’s face, directing his head gently towards himself.

adam was unprepared for gansey’s hands to be on his face, so he accidentally stopped breathing. gansey’s fingertips were on his temple, and what a good word for it, temple, like adam could be holy, like he could be better just there, in the hollow of his skull where gansey held him. 

“look at me,” gansey said again, softer; adam watched his mouth just barely move, the part of his lips, and then he looked at him, at his eyes, which were fluttering and green with that sting of yellow at the center. 

“hazel,” he said nonsensically, and gansey frowned even deeper, and adam hated it, and even made a sad noise about it. his head pounded in gansey’s palms, and he was still a little bit scared, and damn, he’d never had somewhere safe to go when he was scared before. the camaro was gansey’s piece of safety, and here he was, letting adam sit in it with him. 

gansey opened his mouth a little, the shape of adam’s name on his lips, and adam knocked one of his arms away so he could surge forward and kiss him. 

gansey stayed perfectly still. his hand had fallen to adam’s shoulder, grip loose but hot enough to burn adam through the cheap cotton of his work shirt. and adam felt immediately stupid, and guilty for making gansey touch his bad, dirty, cheap shirt. he pulled back, pressed himself into the passenger door. he pressed his lips together, and his head pounded harder.

“adam,” gansey said, and there it was, that pity, so potent gansey couldn’t even disguise it as anything else. how silly, to think that adam could ever have any part of gansey. gansey belonged to glendower, and to that big mansion up north. nothing in this world was adam’s — not his aglionby sweater, not the money he earned, and most definitely not gansey.

“adam,” he said, a little panicked, trying to fix it, always trying to fix it, “i’m — i, it’s okay if you—”

“i’m not,” adam interrupted, suddenly too aware of their proximity to the double wide, like if gansey said it out loud his father would hear it loud and clear. and then adam wouldn’t need the hospital, just a hole in the ground to throw his body in. funerals were too expensive.

“i’m not,” he said again, just in case, even though he obviously _was,_ at least sort of. enough to matter.

“okay,” gansey said, and turned back to the front, hand going to the ignition.

before he could turn the key, adam said, quickly, “don’t tell ronan.”

gansey paused, then started the car, the pig roaring to life, loud enough to drown out anything else. adam relaxed minutely against the cool glass of the window.

and they never spoke of it again.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! :-) lmk what u thought! or if you have any other missing scenes that live rent-free in your head bc i have so many fhkdjfknjd ;-;


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